Cross-post

By: Shafia Rashid, Senior Technical Advisor, Family Care International (FCI) Program of Management Sciences for Health Postpartum hemorrhage (PPH)—excessive, uncontrolled bleeding during or after childbirth—is the leading cause of maternal death around…

By: Anna Bella Korbatov, Wilson Center In 2013, nearly 300,000 women died during pregnancy and childbirth. The majority of those deaths were in developing countries and entirely preventable. Much of the effort towards reducing this number has been…

By: Anna Bella Korbatov, Intern, Environmental Change and Security Program, Wilson Center This post is part of “Inequities in Maternal Mortality in the U.S.,” a blog series hosted by the MHTF. On the world stage, the United States is an outlier…

The Global Maternal Newborn Health Conference, held in Mexico City from October 18-21, will provide a forum to identify, understand, and respond to the most urgent health needs of mothers and newborns. The hope is that it will accelerate momentum for…

By: Schuyler Null, Editor, New Security Beat In the long term, improving maternal and child health is as critical to national security as any problem in Pakistan today, said a panel of experts including Minister of National Health Services Saira Afzal…

A young woman arrived at a health clinic in Sierra Leone with heavy bleeding. She was suffering from postpartum hemorrhage (PPH)—or excessive bleeding after birth—the most common cause of death for women after delivery. The midwife at the clinic acted…

What helps save the lives of about 800,000 babies every year and doesn’t cost a dime? Breastfeeding. Of all preventive health interventions, breastfeeding—done within the first hour of life, exclusively for the first six months, and until age two—has the…

"[My patient] had waited 41 years for treatment. It took me just 20 minutes and 1 stitch to give back her dignity," said Shershah Syed. Shershah, a leading obstetrician-gynaecologist in Pakistan, has long been a visionary campaigner for women’s rights,…

In May 1855, Dr. James Marion Sims opened the first obstetric fistula hospital in New York City. Just 40 years later, it closed, reflecting a sharp decline in maternal morbidity rates in the United States and other Western countries. The Waldorf Astoria…

By: Francesca Cameron, Program Assistant, the Wilson Center’s Maternal Health Initiative Fear of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and other infectious diseases has been used as an excuse to deny women health care around the world. Some women…